Hezbollah is demanding that Israel enter into indirect negotiations to effect a prisoner change that might include Corporal Gilad Shalit in addition to the two Israel Defense Forces soldiers abducted yesterday.Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah demanded at a news conference held yesterday at the movement's headquarters in Beirut that Israel release three Lebanese prisoners it is holding - Samir Kuntar, Yehiya Saqaf [whom Israel denies holding - Y.S.] and Nasim Nasser and promised that he would demand the release of additional Arab prisoners in the course of negotiations.

I wrote a post about Samir Kuntar in April and it is timely to repeat it today. Kuntar is a hero to Palestinians, a "soldier" in their war against the Jews. Reading about his "heroic" exploiuts should sicken anyone who has a modicum of humantiy.

My April post:

Peace will come when the Arabs will love their children more than they hate us. -Golda Meir

A young Palestinian, whose age has variously been reported as anywhere between 16 and 18, succeeded in murdering 9 Israelis for the crime of being Israelis. The Palestinians and their enablers never fail to remind us of what they believe and what they value. This murderer is being hailed as a hero among his countrymen; his Mother Defends Her Son's Decision to Explode Himself. The temptation for civilized people is to look away, to imagine he acted out of some deeply felt pain at his lot in life. Sadly for our future, this boy was not psychiatrically disturbed; in fact he represented the greatest flowering of Palestinian manhood.

Healthy self esteem depends, in large part, on how closely one is able to approximate one's ego ideal. The ego ideal represents who a person wants to be; it includes the kind of person he aspires to, the kind of work, love relationships, hopes and dreams. Most of us aspire to be the best teacher, doctor, policeman, athlete we can be; the best father, mother, or spouse we can be. In a culture that defines the highest of all aspirations as that of the suicide murderer, many young people will take that as their ego ideal, and many will act on that desire.

The Palestinian Authority has announced that it was granting honorary citizenship to two Arab terrorists who killed Israelis: a Lebanese terrorist, Samir Quntar, and Jordanian terrorist, Sultan Al-Ajaluni. Both are serving life sentences in Israeli jails.

It is easy to forget the atrocities of Samir Quntar (who has a web site devoted to glorifying his name and deeds, which I will not link to.) The story of Smadar Haran Kaiser, whose life was violated by Samir Quntar, is unbearably painful, but must be told and re-told. These are her words:

It had been a peaceful Sabbath day. My husband, Danny, and I had picnicked with our little girls, Einat, 4, and Yael, 2, on the beach not far from our home in Nahariya, a city on the northern coast of Israel, about six miles south of the Lebanese border. Around midnight, we were asleep in our apartment when four terrorists, sent by Abu Abbas from Lebanon, landed in a rubber boat on the beach two blocks away. Gunfire and exploding grenades awakened us as the terrorists burst into our building. They had already killed a police officer. As they charged up to the floor above ours, I opened the door to our apartment. In the moment before the hall light went off, they turned and saw me. As they moved on, our neighbor from the upper floor came running down the stairs. I grabbed her and pushed her inside our apartment and slammed the door.

Outside, we could hear the men storming about. Desperately, we sought to hide. Danny helped our neighbor climb into a crawl space above our bedroom; I went in behind her with Yael in my arms. Then Danny grabbed Einat and was dashing out the front door to take refuge in an underground shelter when the terrorists came crashing into our flat.

They held Danny and Einat while they searched for me and Yael, knowing there were more people in the apartment. I will never forget the joy and the hatred in their voices as they swaggered about hunting for us, firing their guns and throwing grenades. [Emphasis mine-SW] I knew that if Yael cried out, the terrorists would toss a grenade into the crawl space and we would be killed. So I kept my hand over her mouth, hoping she could breathe. As I lay there, I remembered my mother telling me how she had hidden from the Nazis during the Holocaust. "This is just like what happened to my mother," I thought.

As police began to arrive, the terrorists took Danny and Einat down to the beach. There, according to eyewitnesses, one of them shot Danny in front of Einat so that his death would be the last sight she would ever see. Then he smashed my little girl's skull in against a rock with his rifle butt. That terrorist was Samir Kuntar.

By the time we were rescued from the crawl space, hours later, Yael, too, was dead. In trying to save all our lives, I had smothered her.

I emphasized the joy and hatred in their voices for a reason. It is hard for anyone with normal sensibilities to comprehend how someone can feel joy and hatred while smashing in the head of a 4 year old child. What kind of pathology can cause a society to celebrate such evil? The myth of the poor, wretched Palestinians, driven to suicide bombings by despair, persists among the foolish of the West. For Palestinians, murderers are not wretched, they are heroes.

Samir Kuntar is “a beacon of light” for having slaughtered an Israeli father and his two young daughters in a terrorist attack in 1979, according to the PA-controlled daily newspaper Al-Hayat Al-Jadida.

On Thursday the PA daily featured an article labeling Kuntar an “authentic role model” for all Palestinian Arabs.

A Palestinian grade school teacher was interviewed on BBC radio this morning and the interviewer asked if perhaps it was a mistake to elect Hamas, considering the hardships the teacher was facing. He has five children, there is no food in his house, and he doesn't know when he will be paid because the donor countries have cut off funding for the PA until Hamas gives up their dream of murdering Jews. His response was that Hamas represents the Palestinians highest aspirations; they are willing to give up their lives for freedom. Noble sentiments; however, the freedom they seek is the freedom to murder, not to build, and no one should mistake their goals. Repeat:

Peace will come when the Arabs will love their children more than they hate us. -Golda Meir

On the same BBC program, a Hamas spokesman was asked about the decision by Jordan to cancel a meeting with Foreign Minister Mahmoud Zahhar of the Hamas "militant" group ("militant" being the accepted BBC euphemism for those who target and murder innocents with nail bombs drenched in rat poison). Hamas is angry over the Jordan boycott:

Palestinian officials have criticised Jordan's decision to cancel a visit to Amman by Foreign Minister Mahmoud Zahhar of the Hamas militant group.

Amman announced it had postponed the trip indefinitely after discovering arms and explosives it said were smuggled into Jordan by Hamas members.

The Hamas spokesman categorically denied any involvement by Hamas in the smuggling but even the BBC interviewer found that hard to believe. As in the scorpion and the frog, it is their nature. They live to die and kill.

As for Smadar Haran Kaiser: She moved back into her apartment. She never allowed herself to be seen, publicly, in tears. She re-married and now has two children. She is a true hero.

Addendum: Rereading this story in order to edit it for this post was incredibly saddening and infuriating. This is the kind of monstrousness that the Israelis continue to deal with everyday. It is what the people of Beslan know; if the enemy is not stopped, we will all become too familiar with such atrocities. Remember Smadar Haran Kaiser when you read of Israel's "over-reaction" and calls for restraint from the international community.

Hezbollah is demanding that Israel enter into indirect negotiations to effect a prisoner change that might include Corporal Gilad Shalit in addition to the two Israel Defense Forces soldiers abducted yesterday.Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah demanded at a news conference held yesterday at the movement's headquarters in Beirut that Israel release three Lebanese prisoners it is holding - Samir Kuntar, Yehiya Saqaf [whom Israel denies holding - Y.S.] and Nasim Nasser and promised that he would demand the release of additional Arab prisoners in the course of negotiations.

I wrote a post about Samir Kuntar in April and it is timely to repeat it today. Kuntar is a hero to Palestinians, a "soldier" in their war against the Jews. Reading about his "heroic" exploiuts should sicken anyone who has a modicum of humantiy.